Ethereum 2.0 – the long-awaited upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain has been on the cards for quite some time now. Since then, the community, including miners, has been debating over the implications of the change in the consensus mechanism.
The upgrade would mean Ethereum moving from its tried and tested PoW protocol to the PoS protocol. The 2.0 blockchain has been worked upon for almost six years now. The single-laned 1.0 blockchain would be replaced by the multi-laned 2.0 upgrade, which would help to boost the number of concurrently handled transactions.
With time, PoS would gradually put a full stop to Ethereum mining. A few from the community have already started urging miners to “conservatively put an end to mining by the end of the year.” However, pointing out the feasibility of the same, Chinese journalist Colin Wu clarified,
“We consulted some ETH miners in China, they generally believe that ETH cannot end PoW by the end of this year. Developers hope to complete ETH2.0 before the end of the bull market, but this is an impossible task.”
Colin Wu further added,
“There is even a view in China that ETH2.0 will never be completed.”
The 2.0 launch has been delayed for quite some time now. In August last year, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, said,
“I definitely freely admit that Ethereum 2.0 is much harder than we expected to implement from a technical perspective. I definitely don’t think that we discovered any fundamental flaws that make it impossible, and I do think it will be finished. It’s just a matter of time, and it’s actually been progressing quite quickly lately.”
In terms of energy efficiency, the shift from PoW to PoS is going to be advantageous. Highlighting the reduced power consumption and lesser equipment costs, one miner said,
“I have a lot of belief that their network will be a serious space for change. Adoption is happening. People are interested.”
However, he was quick to also add,
“I am not destroying the earth by mining… Let me remind you that PoW got Ethereum to where it’s at today. It will fall when miners shift. ”
People from the community have gotten into frequent PoW vs PoS arguments in the past. The “show of force” and “miner revolt” that was set to happen at the beginning of April was called off. Realizing the disastrous consequences of a chain split, the opposing mining community took a step behind.
So now, even if the ongoing debate heats up, a chain split or hard fork seems quite unlikely because the miners would not “point a shotgun at their own feet” by choosing losses over faint profit margins.
The shift to 2.0 would make attacks on the network even more expensive, however, it should be noted, the PoS protocol hasn’t been tested at such a massive scale before. Ethereum is going to be the biggest cryptocurrency to transition to the PoS consensus mechanism.
